Romney rule change fight on convention floor?

posted at 5:01 pm on August 26, 2012 by Jazz Shaw

Zeke Miller is reporting that a set of changes to the convention rules pushed through by Mitt Romney’s team is raising a few hackles among the delegates and could potentially lead to a squabble on the convention floor. The modifications in question deal – among other things – with the method used to select and approve the individual delegates from each state.

Frustration over changes to the Republican Party’s rules pushed through by the Romney Campaign on Friday may lead to a fight on the floor of the Republican National Convention on Monday.

The Convention Committee on Rules took a number of steps on Friday to weaken the power of state conventions and state parties, while consolidating the power of presidential candidates in the nominating process. Some of the changes — to require that delegations from statewide caucuses and primaries to the convention adhere to the will of voters — weakened the hand of insurgent-type candidates but have been well received by the committee. But a change allowing presidential candidates the right to vet their own delegates to the national convention has many state party officials up in arms — and they are planning to bring it to the convention floor.

It’s tempting, and probably valid, to not read too terribly much into this. The main reason is that they can, and do, change the rules every four years, so nothing is ever really written in stone. It’s also somewhat understandable that the candidate – any candidate – would want to control events as much as possible and keep things flowing smoothly. By the time we get to this stage of the proceedings in an election cycle in the modern era, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Who wants a bunch of infighting at this late date? Some of the changes could also be seen as a way to tamp down any last minute theatrics from sour grapes primary contenders.

But the idea of allowing the nominee to “vet” the delegates from each state party and essentially hand pick the most compliant is certainly disturbing. In the end, the convention is not the show for the candidate to run, but rather the time for the individual state parties to officially anoint the winner. And if they have comments to include or issues to debate, that’s their right.

We do want the process to be a time of celebration and a chance for the candidate to launch a broad introduction of themselves to the voting public. With that in mind, it’s a net positive to avoid turning it into a circular firing squad. But the process shouldn’t be so burdensome and heavy handed that it turns the entire proceeding into a complete beauty pageant. Or at least that’s how I see it.

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Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds true conservatism. The legs are represented by a strong defense, strong free-market economic policies and strong social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.
kingsjester on August 26, 2012 at 6:53 PM

Thanks for this. I support that 3-legged stool and much more, being a Tru-Con:-) (The GOPe will betray you..For the true cons!..:)

Romney said during the primaries he was a “severe” Conservative.
I’m an Extreme Conservative, a.k.a. Tru-Con, LOL

Good comments kj. Been very busy the last few days, so missed many threads. Keep up the good fight!!

Yes, I know very scary. We are talking about the rules of a convention, the only purpose of which is to enhance the goal of putting our nominee in the WH. Therefore, I find it perfectly appropriate to give that nominee a free hand to orchestrate the event to suit his campaign.
MJBrutus on August 26, 2012 at 6:51 PM

False. The purpose of the convention is to choose the nominee . It is NOT a coronation. Romney is still not the nominee…until the delegates vote. This is not a superfluous matter. The RNCPTB has given themselves the power to arbitrarily change the rules for how the GOP nominee is selected. They have essentially give the middle finger to the state parties and the grassroots in general. This is a direct attack on our democracy itself.

I disagree with tying the hands of the delegates. Suppose a party – any party – were to be poised to nominate someone who was found to be a rapist or maybe who had gone to college on a “foreign exchange student” scholarship. I would want the delegates to be able to change their vote to prevent someone like that from being in the WH.

It’s disturbing that some around here are acceptable to a power grab and a sort of “stacking the deck” against grassroots by the establishment!! If the establishment can throw out any delegate that they choose then they can certainly insert insiders and D.C. types at the convention and shut out all forms of disagreements and dissent in 2016 and beyond and I’m not even talking about the antics of the Paulbots here. Wake up folks!!!!

I wrote this over three hours ago. I came back and checked and no one has contradicted it.

These rule changes are not so much about what happens next week or even this fall as they are about control of the party over the next four years, because:

As I understand it, if these rule changes are approved, then if the Republican National Committee doesn’t like any of the other rules passed in Tampa, it doesn’t have to wait four years, because with a 3/4 vote they can change things whenever they want to do so.

As I understand it, this could affect the 2016 primaries because the Committee could do as they desire.

Now if my understanding on any point is incorrect, could someone please give me the correct information?

As to the other rule change of vetting the delegates, I’m not so much concerned over some insurgent candidate as I am about the effect of this on the party platform.

IOW, these rules are about control by the GOP powers, and keeping the grass roots in line and preventing them from doing anything the establishment considers “untoward.”

If Romney wins in November, another significant change passed here Friday give him dramatically more power to shape the primary calendar and apportionment of delegates going into 2016. Historically only the convention rules committee, which meets just once every four years, can officially change party rules. But going forward, the Republican National Committee — a group of 168 elected representatives from the states and territories — can change party rules with a three-fourths vote….

Virginia representative Morton Blackwell, who has been a delegate at every convention since he supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, said allowing rules to be changed in between conventions will make it easy for an incumbent president to tailor the rules to his liking….

Blackwell balked when Ginsberg presented another amendment to require that 40 percent of delegates on the committee must sign off on a minority report to bring a challenge to the full convention. It is currently 25 percent.

“He is systematically trying to prevent minorities from having any even remote opportunity of being heard. This is truly an outrage,” Blackwell said. “This, Mr. Ginsberg, really takes the cake.”

At least Ginsberg failed to get that last amendment passed. I hope the other ones are defeated on the floor.

I have no desire to replace the Chicago way with Massachusetts brass knuckles.

IMHO — When I cast my vote in each Primary (Presidential and Congressional) I expected my vote to count … I expect the delegates selected to vote according to my vote and those of all other voters … I do NOT expect the delegates to change the votes according to their own personal “conscience” … they are not elected officials chosen to make decisions … they are appointed delegates representing the majority vote … for some to complain that vetting these delegates is somehow anti-democratic or anti-republic or anti-constitutional is to ignore the fact that these delegates are the ones who are violating the process in the first place … WTF? …

Your expectation is not based in the rules. If you are in a primary state, your view makes a bit more sense, but this would essentially crush the caucus states as well, where the state parties have chosen not to be bound by popular vote. As many have pointed out above, this new rule-making authority reaches well beyond this week’s convention.

IMHO — When I cast my vote in each Primary (Presidential and Congressional) I expected my vote to count … I expect the delegates selected to vote according to my vote and those of all other voters … I do NOT expect the delegates to change the votes according to their own personal “conscience” … they are not elected officials chosen to make decisions … they are appointed delegates representing the majority vote … for some to complain that vetting these delegates is somehow anti-democratic or anti-republic or anti-constitutional is to ignore the fact that these delegates are the ones who are violating the process in the first place … WTF? …

TimLenox on August 26, 2012 at 10:09 PM

So what happens if the person you voted for later comes out and says they are gay, divorcing their wife, are really a lifelong democrat and loves to kill kittens by drowning them? You still want your delegate to give that person your vote? Or would you want there to be a last opportunity for the party to put someone into place that can actually accomplish something? Granted, my argument about what the candidate might do is extreme and unlikely, but then again, people screw up and some people are just bad to begin with.

I for one wish the Democrats had done the right thing in 2008 and tossed Obama off the platform. Then again, might have been nice to have the same have happened to McCain.

In any representative system, as Edmund Burke noted, the people elect a representative who can then only vote his conscience. Things can change, new information can come out. If the delegate must vote only as instructed, there is no need for a convention, just tally the numbers from the primary and the winner writes the rules for next time. That’s not good.

Suppose, as was suggested earlier, that it came out after the primaries that our nominee had committed fraud by claiming foreign citizenship to get admitted to colleges he could not have won entrance to on his own true merits. Would the delegates be bound to “vote as the voters did” or could they stop the embarrassment there?

The reason the coverage of both conventions has been so curtailed in the past 20 years or so is that nothing ever happens, no news is made there, the whole thing in both parties is a staged pageant, scripted in every detail. It makes no sense to prevent even small matters from coming to the floor.

Any statewide presidential preference vote that permits a choice among candidates for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in a primary, caucuses, or a state convention must be used to allocate and bid the state’s delegation to the National Convention in either a proportional or winner-take-all manner, except for delegates and alternate delegates who appear on a ballot in a statewide election and are elected directly by primary voters.

This is the problem as I see it:

For any manner of binding or allocating delegates permitted by these rules, no delegate or alternate delegate who is bound or allocated to a particular presidential candidate may be certified under rule 19 unless the presidential candidate to whom the delegate or alternate delegate is bound or allocated has pre-certified or approved the delegate or alternate delegate.

This rule puts the candidate, not the state party, in control of who is a delegate from your state. By not approving or pre-certifying a delegate that delegate will be out, even though the delegate (or alternate) has been legally elected at convention. It was explained to me today that at a practical manner, no state party wants its delegates to be disavowed so they will make sure that all of the delegates are agreed to by the candidate and the candidate will have “the hammer” to make sure that is what happens.

So the candidate can ensure, not just that the delegates will vote for him, but he can make certain they’re in lockstep agreement with him.

As Hart said earlier,

These are essentially the people who write the platform. Think about the implications of this: If the nominee is anti-life, he or she, can essential disavow any pro-life delegate. If he is in favor of same-sex marriage, he can disavow those delegates. This gives the nominee too much influence over the party and it diminishes the grassroots who choose the delegates to send. It is a top-down approach which favors the establishment.

Another problem is that there is the new rule that the Republican National Rule committee can change the rules whenever they want to with a 3/4 vote.

Those rules govern the primaries. Historically the rules are changes only at the convention. If you have rules that can change ahead of time, then the deck can be stacked.

I wonder how many commenting here about these rules changes know that about half of the “voting member” slots of the Republican Party, who directly and indirectly elect all of the Party officers and delegates, are vacant.

I wonder how many commenting here have ever been a “voting member” of the Party where they live? That is, a precinct committeeman (called different things in some states).

I wonder how many commenting here have ever walked their precinct? Know the name of their precinct? Know any conservatives in their precinct. Helped GOTV (“get out the vote”)in their precinct? Attended their local Party monthly committee meeting?

I wonder how many commenting here will actually help GOTV by making phone calls or walking a precinct on behalf of a “conservative in the primary, Republican in the general” candidate?

They have essentially give the middle finger to the state parties and the grassroots in general. This is a direct attack on our democracy itself.

iwasbornwithit on August 26, 2012 at 9:29 PM

What a load of shit. Primary voters don’t vote for some delegate, we vote for a candidate. Hell yes the candidates should be able to make sure that the delegates empowered by the candidates voters are someone the candidate wants to be associated with.

You want to get rid of primaries? Fine. Try to get rid of primaries. The purpose of the Convention is to coronate the selected nominee and give him or her the best possible push off to go win the White House. It’s not to stroke the egos of people who have nothing better to do with their lives than be a delegate at the Convention. You’re not there because people voted for you. You’re there because people voted for the candidate that you say you support. As one of those voters, I can see absolutely no reason why your desires should be granted any special precedence. I certainly can’t see why they should be more important than the desires of the person I actually voted for.

The rules were loose. The PaulBots decided to take advantage of that. Fortunately, the election’s decided, and their games don’t matter. And now the rules will be changed, to make sure no one else can try similar games in the future, perhaps at some point in time when the game playing would matter. If this bothers you, be pissed at the people who tried to game the rules, not the people who are protecting our votes by changing the rules.

It was explained to me today that at a practical manner, no state party wants its delegates to be disavowed so they will make sure that all of the delegates are agreed to by the candidate and the candidate will have “the hammer” to make sure that is what happens.

So the candidate can ensure, not just that the delegates will vote for him, but he can make certain they’re in lockstep agreement with him.

Question: How do those delegates get selected to go to the Convention? Do the voters personally vote for those delegates? Do they say “I trust Mike a lot more than Joe, so I’m going to vote for Mike to be my delegate”?

Or does Mike announce he’s supporting Perry, and Joe announce he’s supporting Romney, and Mike get selected because enough of us supported Perry over Romney?

If you believe it’s the former, then of course it would make sense that Mike’s desires should be more important than Perry’s. But in that case, I’d like to know where you live, because I’ve voted in a lot of Republican primaries, and I’ve never once voted for a delegate. I’ve voted for candidates, and trusted that the delegates would be picked appropriately.

Picking a delegate “for” a candidate, who the candidate does not actually want, does not count as “picked appropriately.”

IOW, in the view of this primary voter, this change is a long time coming, and entirely appropriate.

You want to go to the convention to vote as you think best? Fine. Get elected on your own merit, not on the virtue of someone else’s name. Because if you’re only going to the convention because a bunch of us voted for Perry, then your opinions don’t matter. Perry’s do.

It’s called representative democracy. And the representative we voted for was Perry, not you.

The Conservative who have been labelled erroneously, Social Conservatives, are Reagan Conservatives, like myself, and MM. To simply say I’m economically Conservative, and Liberal in everything else, is to be sitting on a one-legged stool, as Ronaldus Magnus, himself, said.

The article does show that more Conservatives identify themselves as Conservative on “Social issues”, than, do not.

And, yes, the actions that they are taking at the Convention is a ploy to block “Movement Conservatism”.

kingsjester on August 26, 2012 at 6:39 PM

The fault in that conclusion of yours, “kingjester,” is your presumption that it is you/Palin-Paul types who are “Conservative” and everyone else is some sort of insurrectionist supposedly working ill to make the GOP into another DNC…err, something like that, written thus to make my point.

The point being that there are millions of Americans, voters, who remain out of the “social media” facebook clubby-locations but who do maintain quite conservative (both financially/economically and socially) in their lives, in who they vote for and how they vote. Regardless in many cases of if they live in those Left-blue states surrounded by Liberals or not.

And most of those, the majority of those, have supported Romney and are supporting Romney-Ryan now.

So though you, kingjester, describe an environment well, you arrive at the wrong conclusion: those conservatives are not led by nor consider themselves defined by Ron Paul and/or Sarah Palin.

And have confidence in Mitt Romney to provide us with a talented, capable Presidency, and that includes with Paul Ryan.

This “rules change” move is for reasons to secure a functional convention that discourages the dysfunctional displays by people who never are happy, as they are not successful in attracting a majority of voters to their pre-convention politicizing.

I agree that the move itself poses potential for exploitation (per Jazz’s post), but at this time, it’s clearly an effort to get the GOP back together after the ongoing and destructive threats by some who never do seem pleased with the majority, regardless.

I wrote this over three hours ago. I came back and checked and no one has contradicted it.

These rule changes are not so much about what happens next week or even this fall as they are about control of the party over the next four years, because:

As I understand it, if these rule changes are approved, then if the Republican National Committee doesn’t like any of the other rules passed in Tampa, it doesn’t have to wait four years, because with a 3/4 vote they can change things whenever they want to do so.

As I understand it, this could affect the 2016 primaries because the Committee could do as they desire.

Now if my understanding on any point is incorrect, could someone please give me the correct information?

As to the other rule change of vetting the delegates, I’m not so much concerned over some insurgent candidate as I am about the effect of this on the party platform.

IOW, these rules are about control by the GOP powers, and keeping the grass roots in line and preventing them from doing anything the establishment considers “untoward.”

INC on August 26, 2012 at 6:25 PM

INC on August 26, 2012 at 9:54 PM

Likely those comments went un-refuted because they’re reasonable.

The rules-change issue does appear to be (obviously) a tactical move to make for a more functional nomination process and/or convention process.

We’ve had the primaries, time for the displays of contrariness and threats to withdraw from the party are over, at least for this ELECTION process.

And, that contrary behavior doesn’t work toward a win, anyway, and everyone knows it. And this sort of use of a convention to make a show of being contrary or even unsupporting does nothing but aid the opposition.

I think some people are under the misapprehension that these rules are about this convention and nothing else, and that if you’re against them you’re a Paul supporter or you’re not voting for Mitt.

INC on August 26, 2012 at 9:56 PM

Well, yes, but that’s just common sense or otherwise called “heeding one’s instincts” when you’re feeling certain questions about others’ motives.

Meaning, yes that’s the impression some are under and no, it’s not. Can be, can not be.

I think it’s a rule-change effort to try and stear-clear of newly born antagonisms under guise of being “Republicans” by those who think ill of the party regardless. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between Libertarians and Democrats, let me put it that way.

False. The purpose of the convention is to choose the nominee . It is NOT a coronation. Romney is still not the nominee…until the delegates vote. This is not a superfluous matter. The RNCPTB has given themselves the power to arbitrarily change the rules for how the GOP nominee is selected. They have essentially give the middle finger to the state parties and the grassroots in general. This is a direct attack on our democracy itself.

iwasbornwithit on August 26, 2012 at 9:29 PM

Perhaps this is the way life is in the world of creative anachronisms. In the real world of today-land the convention is most definitely a coronation. The votes have all been cast in the primaries and the convention is nothing more than a 3 day infomercial for his candidacy.

Perhaps this is the way life is in the world of creative anachronisms. In the real world of today-land the convention is most definitely a coronation. The votes have all been cast in the primaries and the convention is nothing more than a 3 day infomercial for his candidacy.

MJBrutus on August 27, 2012 at 7:15 AM

No, it isn’t. Just because you would like to coronate Romney as President for Life does not make that the purpose of the GOP convention. Unless there has been another change in the rules that I am not aware of, the convention is, in fact, much more than a “3-day infomercial” for the “presumptive nominee.”

Furthermore, these heavy-handed tactics by Romney are doing FAR more to cause division within the party than anything that anyone else is doing.

What a load of shit. Primary voters don’t vote for some delegate, we vote for a candidate. Hell yes the candidates should be able to make sure that the delegates empowered by the candidates voters are someone the candidate wants to be associated with.

Greg Q on August 27, 2012 at 1:32 AM

What if the presumptive nominee was Akin? Wouldn’t you want the delegates to be more than sycophants?

I have read all of the comments made by INC and those made by Iwasbornwithit as well. And I’ve read the opposing comments.

My question is if I’m understanding these rules changes, then what is the point of delegates? Perhaps I’m missing something and if so, would appreciate someone to clear it up. It seems that the presumptive Nominee will now be able to “select” the delegates he/she wants and the rest have no say and just go home? If that is true, what is the point of delegates? Thanks to those that can clarify this for me.

NYT, (i never link to commies) report on malkin site says a deal made.

State elect delagates, the delagate must vote for the person the state has certified as the winner of the primay on the first vote, if the delagte does not (votes for Ron Paul or some such) then the vote will not count.